You can't tell from these photos, but my garden doesn't get a lot of direct sunlight. It's underneath a stairway at my apartment building, and as such, gets bright brilliant sun for maybe two hours a day on the days when there is bright brilliant sun to be had in Portland.

Apparently this results in extremely tall versions of plants:

Two foot tall broccoli, anyone?

I had to stake my spinach plants. Stake my spinach plants:

Stem salad: the wave of the future.

My tomato plant is at least properly proportioned!

These photos are terrible, but the concrete I was standing on was really hot.

And look! Produce!

Snap pea & stem salad coming right up!

Thus concludes your virtual garden update.

ETA: Dear Livejournal + iPhone: I GIVE UP. I GIVE UP SERIOUSLY. I even re-saved these things on my computer to make sure they were oriented properly. Just refuse to post photos right-side-up ever, and see if I care. I'm so mad I think I will go eat some stems.

It's expanding, too. I keep picking up more pots at the store. Hehe. The giant terra cotta pots have been there since I moved in, and a neighbor was planting in them for a while... when she moved out she ripped out her plants but left the pots, and I snuck in like a NINJA. Now everyone assumes they're mine. HAHA.

I've actually begun cutting some things back so they bush out and produce more. But, it doesn't always work. Lately, my tomatillos and I have been doing battle, and I think I'm winning. Plus, baby tomatillos are ADORABLE.

You want to look for things that want shade, at the very most part sun, rather than full sun - which is sadly not really tomatoes and such.

I recently discovered the existence of CLIMBING spinach, which we're going to try planting this year - I mean, hey, it was less than a buck for it at the garden store, and apparently my mother had actually heard of this previously. I just like the idea of walking out and just plucking some leaves off the spinach instead of fussing with heads of things!

I'm growing two kinds now! Plus the spinach trees. Oooh, parsley does well too. And radishes! I need to pull out half my radishes, eat them, and then plant more. Farming is hard work!

I also need to research the life cycle of broccoli, because I thought I had broccoli heads growing on top of my massive broccoli plants, and then I walked out there this morning and what I thought were broccoli heads are now a gajillion little yellow flowers. Will they become little broccolis? Has it gone to seed already? It's mysterious BUT EXCITING!

Oh! Damn. Well, it looks awesome, anyway, and I don't feel too bereft for missing out on my two inches of broccoli. At the end of the season I'll cut down my broccoli trees and make a stir-fry with the stems.

Ooooh, I just looked it up, and apparently broccoli plants CAN grow to be 3 feet tall, so perhaps mine are not total freaks of nature. Aww, sadness! This one article diagnoses my plants as flowering too early because they were MISTREATED AS SEEDLINGS. That is just the saddest possible way to say that they weren't transplanted early enough. Also, I suspect I have them too close together, because they're in a container. Further research says that broccoli flowers are good in salads and soups, so ALL IS NOT LOST.

My poor mistreated seedlings that I didn't adopt soon enough from the store!